Synopsis

This app aims to make your document and note keeping work as easy as possible. By combining access to all your potential cloud saved documents Synopsis not only allows you store and organise your documents in one place but also to create notes of these documents and organise them into a number of smart features. We have given the app an EAS Certification of 5 Stars and EAS Recommended Status.

Teacher Review

This app aims to make your document and note keeping work as easy as possible. By combining access to all your potential cloud saved documents Synopsis not only allows you store and organise your documents in one place but also to create notes of these documents and organise them into a number of smart features.

The app is free but does have one advert running throughout. The advert however does link to the app and is a further way of storing and archiving all your cloud files together (a further advance to the Synopsis app). If you wish to remove the advert though you can pay an additional 2.99 for this, cheap when the app itself is free.

The design and interface is simple and effective however it may take a little playing around to start using the app effectively. In fact I would suggest that this app will continue to get better the more you use it and take advantage of its features. You just know there are going to be some hidden gems that are going to have you ‘ooohhhing’ when you stumble upon them. A slightly more effective interactive tutorial would certainly help here to give the user as much information about all the features and how to utilise the app to the maximum however there is a decent help section which explains, in a user guide, how the features work.

On opening the app you are given four different options. The first is the ‘reader’ side of the app. This allows the user to read any document that has been downloaded and by clicking on ‘open button’ you can download any document from any of the following cloud storage places, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, Web. This is probably the biggest feature of this app, allowing you access to all your different places and organising them in one place. Once the document is open you can either just read the document or you can create bookmarks, notes or highlight certain sections of the text.

The notes that you have created from the document can then be viewed in the second section from the homepage the ‘notes’ section. This lists all the notes that have been made and allows the user to add further information to them as well as organising them in as easier way for you to use and access them as possible. Editing is also possible in this view as well as deleting the notes no longer needed. However, the best part of this view is the ability to create flashcards from the notes you have made.

Once you have made your flash card this can viewed in the third section from the homepage; the developers have certainly allowed a sensible integration between each of the different sections to allow as much ease of use as possible. Again there is the opportunity to edit, delete and sort your flash cards as well as a different view which gives you the opportunity to choose whether you see the both the question and answer on the flash cards, just the answer or to see the answer when the flash card is tapped. This is a perfect feature for those wishing to use the app for study purposes.

The fourth section from the homepage is the library section and this is where you can access and download all your documents from all your different cloud storage places. You can sort and archive your files in whatever way you see fit and create new folders to accumulate similar documents from different cloud storage sites. In each of the page views across all the sections there are simple colour coded explanations of options at the bottom of the screen and this allows the user to quickly learn what they can do on each page and how to go about it. After a while of using the app though these quickly become second nature.

One question I had throughout was who the user for this app going to be. Originally I was thinking that with the ‘Educational’ subject matter it would be more for students however, from using the app I think it has applications for older students, teachers and anyone else wanting a way to organise all of the cloud documents. Although there a number of excellent features, such as the creation of notes and flash card, the ability to store your documents in one place is a big plus, especially for someone whose documents are spread across a number of different cloud storage places.

The app is free to download and has received an EAS certification of 5 stars.

Screenshots

From the Developer

Whether you are studying or reading a non-fiction book or reviewing a seriously long study document, haven’t you secretly wished that you could note all your important points in one place which you can later use to summarize? Have you ever felt the need to create
study cards or review cards or ‘Flash Cards’ as we call it, in a much more simpler way? Have you ever got confused about the location of your documents in the cloud ?

Synopsis has the answer to all of this. How ?

Well, here’s a synopsis of ‘Synopsis’

• A very simple reader with only the tools you require
• Read PDF Documents and highlight important points in the document
• All highlighted points from your PDF document are automatically copied into the Notes Module of Synopsis
• Access the Notes area and fine tune your highlighted notes
• Create manual Notes
• Modify your notes
• Create a flow/structure for your notes in an order you prefer
• Creating Titles and Headings for your Notes
• Export it as a PDF file
• Export it as a Notes file that you can then share with your colleagues, friends or study mates
• Print your PDF Document directly
• Saving your Notes as a PDF or as a raw XML file for future use
• All your Notes can be converted into Flash Cards which can be accessed from the Flash Cards module of Synopsis
• Review your flash cards
• Edit your Flash Cards
• Change the order of your Flash Cards
• Save your Flash Cards
• Review the Flash Cards in any mobile device by going to http://www.mysynopsisapp.com/flashcards/mobile (from January 31, 2014)
• All your documents - PDF, Notes Files, Flash Card Files, Web URL’s – are accessed using cloud services or the Internet. Considering the difficulty in
remembering the location of all these links, Synopsis provides a Library to save all these cloud services links
• Open your libraries and folders within these libraries
• Tag each library and folder
• Save all recently opened connections to your various libraries and folders
• Create a backup of the library created

The app comes with an amazingly simple interface allowing you to master it in no time. There are enough Help links to guide you intuitively so that you use it immediately rather than spend time learning how to use it.